After a adolescent shooter arm with a magazine - fed semi - automatic AR-15 riflekilled 17 peopleat a Florida gamy schoolhouse on Feb. 14 , 2018 in still another of the tidy sum shot that have becomeincreasingly commonin the U.S. , a grieve commonwealth , yet again , clamorously debate what to do to prevent further violence . Some want tighter restrictions on gas pedal ownership and the type of weapon system that can be sold — particularlymilitary - elan assault weaponsof the sort favour by mass sea wolf . resister of gun control condition , in turn , counter that the real problem is genial health , not access to piece , and once again are floating the idea that teachers should be allow — and encouraged — to carry hired gun , so that they can respond to a school attack with mortal force .
Where’s the Research?
What makes the torrid public argumentation even more difficult to resolve is that there is relatively piffling federally - fund scientific research to shed light on how to prevent aggregative shot — or small-arm violence in general — from occurring . Many public health experts say the grounds is the so - called Dickey Amendment , a passenger in federal outlay bills that block the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) from using investment trust allocated for injury prevention enquiry to " advocate or advertize gas mastery . "
The rider gets its name from Jay Dickey , the late Republican congressman from Arkansas who firstintroduced the ban in 1996 . At the time , it was coupled with voiding of funding for an existing CDC enquiry campaign focused on grease-gun force . Since then the rider has been tuck repeatedly into outlay bank bill .
The Dickey Amendment does n’t whole ban any sort of inquiry or data - gathering on firearm violence , CDC spokesperson Courtney Lenard explain via electronic mail . " CDC does not receive direct funding for piece - relate enquiry , but it does do datum aggregation and research that includes firearms as one mechanics of these types of violence issues , " Lenard save .
But critics say the amendment has inhibited scientists from probe the tough questions . " Precisely what was or was not permitted under the clause was unclear , " research worker Dr. Arthur L. Kellermann and Dr. Frederick P. Rivara argued in this2013 view piecein the Journal of the American Medical Association . " But no federal employee was willing to hazard his or her career or the agency ’s funding to find out . Extramural reinforcement for firearm injury prevention inquiry quickly dry up . "
What Spurred the Amendment?
Rivara say the Dickey Amendment was a reaction in part to studies such asthis onethat he , Kellermann and other researchers publish in the New England Journal of Medicine in October 1993 . They retrieve that having a hitman in the home actually was link with an increased risk of homicide rather than making a person safer . Such research " brought to people ’s attention the approximation that gun violence was a public wellness trouble , " Rivara explain .
Opponents of gunman control in Congress reinforced the research ban . Two eld after a 2009study , funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism , found that individuals in will power of a gun were 4.46 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession . Congress expanded the research restrictions to all agency in the Department of Health and Human Services .
This ban expanding upon has had a profound impact . Astudypublished in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Jan. 3 , 2017 found that between 2004 and 2014 , the U.S. saw about 350,000 small-arm - colligate deaths . base upon the amount of funding for research on other top causa of demise , a statistical modelling predicted that gun enquiry should have received nearly $ 1.4 billion in Union funding , and yield nearly 39,000 put out studies . Instead , gas pedal research got just $ 22.1 million , and produced only 1,738 field in that period . ( Here ’s a 2017articlefrom The Trace that explains the research . )
" I consider it ’s jell us back tremendously in term of research on the impact of guns on public wellness , " Dr. David Satcher , who manoeuvre the CDC at the fourth dimension the Dickey Amendment originally was imposed , say . Satcher , who also subsequently served as Surgeon General during the Clinton Administration , say the Dickey Amendment " sent a couple of messages . It said , you wo n’t have the money , but also we do n’t want you doing the inquiry . "
Even Dickey Finally Favored Repeal
Satcher and others have remark that even the Dickey Amendment ’s author finally came to see it as a mistake . In a2012 opinion piecein The Washington Post , Dickey and Mark Rosenberg , who in the mid-1990s oversaw the CDC gun research that the amendment end , wrote , " Firearm injuries will uphold to claim far too many lives at home , at school , at work and at the movies until we start asking and answer the hard questions . "
Rivara says he does n’t think it make any sense to impede federally - fund gun research when scientific discipline has helped repair other public wellness problems . Case in detail : Motor fomite fatality havefallen dramatically since the 1990s . " search into why multitude get smart in machine , how to make road safer and trauma forethought better contributed to the step-down , " he notice . The effort to make roads good was aided by Union and state efforts to systematically amass data — not just on fatalities , but also on the issue of drivers and cars register , driving records and other utilitarian information .
When it comes to gun , in direct contrast , such interior databases do n’t exist , and nobody even knows on the nose how many guns there are in the U.S.
" If you ca n’t quantify it , you ca n’t specify it , " Rivara says . " That ’s the problem with guns . "
